Paul Stafford was a successful contestant in this years Masterchef UK. A show which aims to find the best amateur chefs through a series of knock out cooking challenges. This popular show has inspired millions of tv viewers to believe they too can cook exciting and exotic dishes from scratch. Paul is not only a talented chef but is also a practising artist, previously a course director at Kingston art school. He studied painting and sculpture at the Slade and now is able to combine his art practice alongside cooking and designing intriguing food combinations and menus.

The Bomb Factory Art Foundation will host the “The Art of Cooking” from the 25th July to the 2nd August. This two-week event will explore Paul Stafford’s twin passions of painting and fine food. This show will be both a cooking extravaganza as well as a painting exhibition.

Inspired by his Masterchef journey Paul will cook and host daily food masterclasses by sourcing ingredients from local supermarkets, that would be normally thrown away according to shelf life regulations. Between 5 pm and 7:30 pm every day he will create a dish at a minimum cost, that will be offered free to the audience and passers-by, hopefully inspiring them to do the same in their kitchens. Alongside this cooking event, Paul will be painting the food he has created every day. These foody images will be painted on huge cardboard boxes that will be hung in the gallery space at The Bomb Factory. Once again Paul will be using a resource that would otherwise be thrown away.

Having successfully reached the Final Twelve in the world’s most watched and most prestigious TV cookery contest, in July Paul will be featured in an exciting new one man show in Central London, with the theme of food and cooking. There might even be a chance to sample his cuisine. More information to follow….

In a trailer park in deepest Florida, it’s three in the afternoon. Metal is too hot to touch, tarmac is sticky like maple syrup, the air as thick as grits. It’s quiet, other than the muffled drone of an afternoon TV quiz show. Everyone is inside with their electric fans and iced tea. Only a bloody fool would sit out in this heat.

Oh, look! There’s one now.

Paul Stafford is at his easel, painting frantically before his acrylics dry up in the sun.

In front of him is an old refuse skip.

But what HE’S seeing is the romance of 1950’s Americana – the colour, the lettering, the palm trees behind.

On another day it’s a 1959 Belle Air Chevrolet. Then a scrapped vintage Cadillac.

By now everyone is used to this Englishman out in the Midday Sun. Even the Mad Dogs ignore him apart from the odd sniff of his leg and a drool on his palette. Occasionally a resident will mosey over, telling anecdotes about meeting Elvis or offering cold beer.

Back here in Occitanie, Paul finds similar treasures lurking in breakers’ yards and hedgerows – a weed covered 1956 Mercedes, a burnt out Citroen, an antiquated tractor, a mid century three wheel motorbike. Decrepit contraptions all with stories, written in rust, of a former life whipping around the vineyards of a southern French village.

Paul Stafford trained at the Slade School and has spent his career as a practising artist and art educator at Kingston University, where he is an Honorary Fellow. You can see all these paintings and many others at a new show at Chateau Cabezac.

Paul is sharing the exhibition space with a second artist, YvonneLodemore, another London based practitioner and educator, having studied Fine Art at Central St Martins.

Initially inspired by the Cornish landscape and artists, her work developed from observations and interpretations of landscape. It has changed over the years concentrating more critically on surfaces, constructions, rhythm and movement. She has also produced an extensive body of figurative work and often returns to the figure, encouraging both aspects of her work to support the understanding and interpretation of the other. Yvonne’s abstract work originates from the representational but does not define any overt representation. She’s interested in geometry, natural grids and the infinite number of opportunities within. Her work is an attempt to open a new window onto the world, its complexity in turn, reflecting the many decisions we make in everything we do. She intends the viewer to both travel through her paintings and to take them in as a whole.

These recent abstract works were inspired by observations of compressed and contained materials. She has used the grid as a device to manipulate the viewer to explore the surface and move in and out of the shapes, spaces and intersecting lines.

Come and enjoy this doubly diverse exhibition and also of course, sample some delicious Cabezac wines.

You are invited to the Vernissage on Friday, 20th July 2018, 5.00 – 8.00pm.

The exhibition runs from 21st July until 31st August. Open 7 days a week.

One Summer’s day an artist sat at his creaking, oil-stained easel surrounded by buttercups. By his side were tubes and brushes, ahead of him a field of English wild grasses. Through the thick, hot air, hovered the buzz of flies, the occasional one of which would land on his primed board and stick to the paint, tacky in the sunlight.

Cows crunched the grass and gave him the odd sidelong glance, the munch of their ruminating the only other sound…..until now…..

A car engine hummed closer and the tyres spat gravel on the lane as it slowed. A window wound down and the artist looked up expectantly. He would enjoy sharing this idyllic moment with an interested passer-by, to both mutually appreciate the afternoon, the scenery and, talk to them about his work.

“W****r!”

Crushed, he turned back to the painting on his wobbly stool and, promptly fell over sideways, face in a cow pat. The animals looked on with disdain.

The reaction when he sits and paints amongst the vines of the Languedoc however, is entirely different. Passers-by do stop to look and they do chat, with fascination. The landscape offers rich pickings, from trees to fields, lakes and mountains. There are other subjects that provide a visual feast as well as a literal one – foie gras, oysters, fresh sardines. There are treasures plucked from vide greniers and brocantes, objects with history and a story to tell through their patina and form. Some paintings actually use found objects as their canvas, for example, a grape picker’s hotte painted on to a 1950’s French school desk.

Paul Stafford is holding an exhibition of these works at the beautiful Chateau Cabezac. This space, apart from being impressive in its own right, is an appropriate venue for the pictures as they are run through with a love for the Languedoc, just as the wine from the Minervois runs through the region like ink through vellum.

As well as the paintings inspired by and created in the area, are some works of a different flavour, though still French in origin. They are a series ignited by vintage Parisian postcards of models in various poses designed to titivate and tease. To add to the nuance of sauciness, they are housed in old boxes and tins, into which the viewer must peak.

You are invited to join Paul Stafford, try the delicious Cabezac wine and, view his work at the Vernissage on the evening of July, 22nd. If you can’t make that evening, the exhibition will run until the end of August, so there is plenty of time to visit the chateau, surrounded by those inspirational vineyards………and not a cowpat in sight.